Beyond the Early Campaign: A Question of Priorities
By Ameh Abraham
There is a photograph that haunts the Nigerian imagination. It is not one picture, but a recurring reel: politicians in agbada, seated under air-conditioned canopies, doling out bags of rice stamped with their faces. Behind them, banners promise a “Greater Nigeria” in 2027. In the foreground, smiling beneficiaries. The scene is one of celebration, of continuity, of the machinery of governance humming toward the next election.
But just beyond the frame, often only a few kilometers away, there is another Nigeria. It is a country where roads have become graveyards, where schools are empty because children are either hiding or have been taken, where villages are now ghost settlements, abandoned after the last attack. In Nigeria, the currency is not naira but fear. And the only election that matters is the one no one is talking about: the election between life and death.
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We have arrived at a moment in our national life that is as absurd as it is tragic. The 2027 general election is months away, and the air is already thick with campaigns, defections, and realignments. The political class has, as it always does, activated its electioneering machinery long before the legally mandated window. And while the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) wrings its hands, and lawyers like Femi Falana rightly demand that early campaigners be prosecuted for violating the Electoral Act, the question that goes unasked is this: What, exactly, are we campaigning for?
Falana’s recent intervention, reported by The ICIR and The Cable, is characteristically sharp. He has urged INEC to charge politicians engaging in premature campaigns to court, arguing that the commission must test the limits of the law. He calls the trend “abnormal.” The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has echoed him, warning of legal action if INEC fails to act. Even INEC itself has acknowledged the problem, with National Commissioner Abdullahi Zuru noting that “appreciation” and “philanthropy” events are being used as smokescreens for early campaigns.
These are necessary interventions. They speak to the integrity of our electoral calendar and the rule of law. But they also, inadvertently, expose a deeper pathology. For the fact that we are debating premature campaigns while the country is being bled dry by bandits, terrorists, and kidnappers reveals a fundamental misalignment of priorities. It suggests that for those who seek power, the timeline of politics has become more real than the timeline of national survival.
The Silence in the Noise
Consider the data. In the past year alone, several Nigerians have been killed in attacks by bandits and terrorists. Highways have become hunting grounds. Schools have been closed for weeks in some states because of the fear of mass abductions. Farmers cannot go to their farms, which means food prices continue to climb. The United Nations has reported hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in the North-West alone.
These are not mere statistics. They are lives interrupted, futures foreclosed. And yet, if you were to attend a political rally today or watch the coverage of a party convention, you would be forgiven for thinking that the greatest threat to Nigeria is not insecurity, but the possibility that the wrong person might win an election in 2027.
There is a word for this: escapism. But it is a dangerous form of escapism, because it is not an escape from reality; it is an escape from responsibility. While the political class is busy with defections and strategy sessions, the primary purpose of government, the protection of lives and property, as enshrined in Section 14(2)(b) of our Constitution, is being outsourced to vigilantes, to communities, to God.
A Government of the Living
This brings us to a truth that should be too obvious to need stating, yet it must be stated: only the living can vote. Only the living can be governed. Only those who survive the night can go to the polls in the morning.
When a politician gives out rice in the name of a 2027 campaign, they are making a bet that the recipient will be alive to cast that vote. But what if the road to the polling unit is controlled by bandits? What if the village is empty because it was razed last month? What if the voter is not dead, but displaced, living in a camp hundreds of kilometers away, with no voter card and no hope of returning? Then the rice becomes a cruel joke. It is not a campaign promise; it is a condolence gift delivered before the death.
This is not hyperbole. In states like Zamfara, Katsina, and Benue, entire communities have been depopulated by violence. In some local government areas, governance itself has collapsed. Traditional rulers have been accused of negotiating with bandits. Schools have been shut for months. The state has, in effect, retreated, leaving citizens to fend for themselves.
And yet, the political machinery churns on. The same governors whose states are bleeding insecurity are hosting party conventions, flying to Abuja for strategy meetings, and commissioning billboards for 2027. The dissonance is staggering.
The Law and the Moral Imperative
Femi Falana is right to invoke the law. The Electoral Act 2022, in Section 94(1), prohibits election campaigning earlier than 150 days to the date of the election. The logic is sound: premature campaigns distract from governance, deepen political tension, and waste public resources. But there is another logic, one that Falana’s legalism only hints at: premature campaigns are not merely illegal; they are immoral when citizens are dying.
When a politician launches a campaign while people are being buried, they are not just violating a law; they are violating a covenant. The covenant of leadership is that, in exchange for power, you offer protection. You offer the assurance that, as long as you are in office, the people will sleep without fear. You offer the guarantee that your ambition will not become their peril.
Today, that covenant is broken. And the early campaigns are not a cause of the brokenness; they are a symptom of it. They are a sign that the political class has lost touch with the reality of the country they seek to govern. They are a sign that power has become an end in itself, detached from its purpose.
A Call to Remember
What is to be done? In the short term, INEC must act. As Falana suggests, prosecuting a few high-profile early campaigners would send a clear message that the rule of law applies to all. SERAP’s threat of legal action is a necessary pressure point.
But beyond enforcement, there is a need for something more fundamental: a national reckoning. We must ask ourselves, as a country, what it means to govern. We must ask our leaders to look at the empty villages, the closed schools, the families who no longer travel to see each other, and ask themselves: “What am I campaigning for?”
The 2027 election will come. It will come whether we are prepared or not. But if we arrive at that election with a political class that has been busy distributing rice and strategizing defections, while insecurity has deepened and lives have been lost, then the election itself will be a hollow ritual. It will be a performance of democracy in a country that has forgotten what democracy is for.
Democracy is not about winning power. It is about using power to protect life. It is about ensuring that the citizen can go to the farm, to the market, to the church or mosque, without fear. It is about making the road safe, the school safe, the home safe.
These are not election promises. They are preconditions for any election worth the name.
Let us remember: Only the living can vote. And right now, too many of our people are fighting just to stay alive. The least we can ask of those who seek to lead them is to fight for that cause, too, before they ask for a single vote.